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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Microsoft Hypes Up XUL As The Greatest Expiriment Since Ad
>> Now let's look what a button looks like in the
>>"revolutionary" Microsoft XAML thingy:
>>
>> <Button Background="LightSeaGreen"
FontSize="24pt">
>> Calculate
>> </Button>
>>
>> Whow. Compared to the XUL version:
>>
>> <button label="Calculate" style="background:
>>lightSeaGreen; font-size: 24pt" />
>
> Hmm. To me it looks like XAML is considerably better
> designed than
> XUL. This is very much like the difference between
> SVG and XSL-FO
> that I wrote about in Item 11 of Effective XML, Make
> structure
> explicit through markup. XUL is using a double
> syntax with embedded
> CSS. The syntax should be XML, even if the semantics
> come from CSS.
> XAML and XSL-FO get this right. XUL and SVG get this
> wrong.
Well, my point was that Microsoft doesn't care about
standards and blissfully ignores CSS and reinvents the
wheel to take full control.
As far as I know in SVG you can use either CSS style
properties or full-blown XML attributes.
As far as XUL goes it's all in flux and adding
full-blown XML attributes in addition to CSS style
properties is just syntatic sugar and convenience and
thus easy to addon.
> I think someone asked if it would be possible to
> write an XSLT
> stylesheet to convert from XAML to XUL. One
> consequence of XUL's
> design is that it is much easier to write a
> stylesheet to go from
> XAML to XUL than from XUL to XAML. XAML-->XUL is
> straightforward
> because all the important XAML structures are marked
> up in XML.
> XUL-->XAML requires writing a CSS parser in XSLT,
> doable but ugly and
> hard.
Well, again adding full-blown XML attributes for CSS
style properties is easy, but the core questions still
remains. Will Microsoft play together with others? Of
course, not. They want it all for themselves.
> The use of a potentially structured label is also a
> decided
> improvement in XAML, as I wrote about in Item 12 of
> Effective XML,
> Store metadata in attributes. XUL's approach is
> decidedly limited. It
> can't easily be extended to make a label anything
> other than plain
> text. I've put that chapter online too:
Well, XUL already supports strutured labels that use
XHTML for rich text and not some new markup language
resembling XHTML.
For example:
<button>
<label><b>Hello</b></label>
</button>
Is perfectly legal in XUL
in XAML it's
<button>
<bold>Hello</bold>
</button>
> Of course, I'm basing all of this on just one
> example, so it's
> possible there are other issues here.
Again, the main issue here is Microsoft go it alone
approach.
> Either way, this is an instructive example of the
> right and wrong way
> to use markup. For a change, it looks like Microsoft
> is the one doing
> it right.
Well, I wouldn't say that reinventing CSS, XHTML, XUL
and SVG is the right thing to do.
The main point of XML is interoperability as far as
I know. If you tell the world my way or the highway
how is this true to the XML charter?
- Gerald
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